Cecil Beaton. The Dandy photographer
Since Friday, March 16, 2001, the Rethymnon Center for Contemporary Art (today Contemporary Art Museum of Crete) hosted in its premises of the "L. Kanakakis” Municipal Art Gallery the photographic exhibition entitled “Cecil Beaton: The Dandy photographer”.
Cecil Beaton was born in 1904 in Britain, during King Edward’s VII reign. The royal court, lived days of splendor dressed in ethereal clothes, closing its eyes to avoid the horror of the First World War. Theater was the core of entertainment as it was loved by everyone, with the dazzling musical actors dressed also in the "ideology" of beauty. The young Beaton is fascinated by this world and seeks to capture beauty through the lens of his camera.
Actors’ photographs become of a very special iconographic interest in Beaton's work. The description of the individual personality and the apotheosis of theatrical roles are permanently intertwined.
Beaton’s glorious career was launched in the ‘30s, winning a contract with Vogue that allowed him to enter everywhere starting taking fashion and high society photos.
His 1935 famous portrait of Marlene Dietrich put his name among the best in the world of entertainment.
Living constantly between Paris and New York, he gets acquainted with famous artists and creates the masterful and evocative portraitsof Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dali. His photographs are inspired by the concepts of surrealism and the neo-romantic paintings of Pavel Tchelitchewand Christian Bérard.
Beaton was also a successful set and costume designer for stage and film productions such as "My Fair Lady" winning two Oscars in 1964.
Beaton's apotheosis arrived in 1968 with his great retrospective exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery of London, which for the first time in its history hosted photography.
The same exhibition was presented the following year at the Museum of the City of New York. In 1972 Cecil Beaton received a knighthood while in 1974 his brilliant career was cut short due to paralysis. However, he continued to draw and photograph until the end of his life for his own pleasure.
In the last decades of the 20th centuryhis name was restored and he was recognized as not just a dandy photographer but also as an artist who revealed the relationship between the illusions and the reality of his era.
Beaton’s exhibition in Rethymnon was organized by the British Council in collaboration with the Rethymnon Center for Contemporary Art. It was presented for the first time in Athens, while the material of the exhibition belongs to the Cecil Beaton’s Archive at Sotheby’s London.
The exhibition consisted of seven sectionswith the following titles: Arcadian Idylls, Shining Beings, Historical Themes, High Style, The Arts, Directing with Brilliance and A New Bohemian Generation: The 60s and 70s.
The exhibition in Rethymnon was held from March 16 to April 27, 2001.
